Monday, April 13, 2009

Well, my easy prediction came true: ol' Larry Moss is officially dead. But who killed him? Not the person I expected: it was Tony Almeida! So we're now left with the impression that Tony is still one of the bad guys, since he helped the other bad guy spirit the remaining bit of the bioweapon away from the bombed-out portion of the Starkwood compound.

I suppose there's a chance that Almeida's still on our side, that what we saw lacked context and will make sense in subsequent episodes (Agent Moss might have been dirty, for example), but that's not looking likely. Here's my "middle knowledge" prediction: if Tony Almeida is indeed one of the baddies, then he will be dead by the end of the day, probably thanks to Jack Bauer. Tony allowed his co-conspirator to kill two federal agents, so the probability that he's a villain is high, which in turn means that the probability of his death is high.

I figured Moss was going to die this episode when he suddenly started doing the right thing. Up to now, Moss has been portrayed as pretty dense, and thus fairly unlikable. On "24," the route to likability is to do whatever Jack says is best, which is why Jack, not the US president, is the actual leader of the free world. Many characters who have gone against Jack's wishes often end up seeing the light, then dying. Moss is no exception. Once he was on the Bauer bandwagon, his fate was sealed. Think back to Lynn McGill's fate in Season 5.

We also see the return of Kim Bauer, who might be offering her dad some stem cells that will work their magic against the pathogen that's currently killing Jack. I'm assuming that Jack has to survive until the end of the day; if he expires, it'll be in the final hour... unless the writers pull a "To Live and Die in L.A." on us and kill off the main character two-thirds of the way through the plot. Don't see that happening. The show rides entirely on Jack.

Based on the preview for next week's episode, things don't look good on the romantic front for Bauer and Agent Walker. She's going to be grieving over the loss of Agent Moss, so viewers can expect her to be rather snarly. There might be some comic potential in having Jack put the moves on her, though: "Hey, babe. I'm dying from a pathogen that's gonna turn me into a drooling, spastic moron in an hour. What say we head over to my place?"

While watching the episode, Dad and I joked about what a crossover "House"/"24" episode would look like ("House" also shows on Fox; in fact, it comes on right before "24"). I wondered aloud who would be torturing whom. Both shows feature their own forms of political incorrectness; mixing the two-- Bauer's brutality and House's inability to hide what he's thinking-- would be volatile.

But such a crossover episode is about as likely as Jack undergoing sexual reassignment surgery, so I'll stop the fanciful speculation here. Given the recent turn of events, with Tony Almeida seeming once again to be an enemy of the state and Starkwood CEO Jonas Hodges raving that he's only a small cog in a very large machine (typical mid- to late-season revelation on "24"), I'm going to bring back my old prediction that Janis Gold (Janeane Garofalo's character) is a mole. She still fits the profile for moles on "24": fairly mousy, whip-smart, and at the center of things. Given the twists we've experienced thus far, I think this is not a bad prediction. It's not as easy or obvious a prediction as "Tony Almeida's gonna die," but I think there's something to it. We'll see.